Concerned Young People of South Africa

It is an honour to host the Fifa World Cup in South Africa.
However, this international event has also become synonymous with prostitution.

The South African government, through proposed legalization of prostitution, will simply hand an entire generation of young men and women, boys and girls over to drugs, criminality, diseases, slavery, suicide and death.

The Concerned Young People in South Africa have visited many schools in rural areas to inform the children about the dangers of prostitution. There was rarely a school where the children were not informed about the work possibilities 2010 will bring. Children have been promised big money, which can be earned by selling their bodies. Prostitution is offered as a way of earning money.

We oppose that our youth should be handed over to such a life. They will sell their youth and virginity and in return receive diseases, drugs, and death.
Men will come with euros and dollars and return with diseases, even HIV, to their families.
This generation is too precious to be sacrificed on the altar of prostitution.
Purity was highly regarded in the white and black nations. Should they sell it to foreigners?

In the Netherlands prostitution is legal, but the Dutch government is taking radical steps to close the legal brothels because there is too much drug and human trafficking. Dutch police cannot manage the legal and illegal drug and human trafficking any longer.
Yet South Africa pays no heed and plunges headlong into the same problems others are desperately trying to get out of.

Prostitution is destructive because

1. Prostitution is anti-family.
   

   99% of the men visiting the prostitutes are married men.

2. Prostitution causes an increase in drug abuse.
   Each forced sex-act has such a tremendously negative impact on the woman that she is unable to handle it without taking drugs.

3. Increase of abortions
   Prostitution causes an increase in abortion, as pregnancies resulting from prostitution will be terminated in order to enable the women to continue working.

4. Increase in AIDS
   Prostitution will contribute to an increase in AIDS infections and other STD's among the prostitutes, the clients and the wives of the clients.
   By legalizing prostitution for 2010 South Africa will contribute to the spread of the international AIDS pandemic.

5. Prostitution is women slavery.
   Prostitutes are enslaved by pimps who do not allow them to leave the profession. They leave at the risk of their own lives.
   The continent of Africa has a history of slavery, but was set free. Now South Africa proposes women slavery!

This country needs young people to play a meaningful role in nation building.
Who will be the leaders, teachers, professors, doctors of the future when this generation dies early deaths? A generation will be lost if they are handed over to prostitution in 2010.

We call upon the government of South Africa not to legalise or even decriminalise prostitution.